


There Were Three

by Emrys MK (mk_malfoy)



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: s03e09 A Journey to the Highlands, Sad, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 12:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10465302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mk_malfoy/pseuds/Emrys%20MK
Summary: The scene that we didn't get to see (for good reason because who could have sat through it without completely breaking down) at the end of s3.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This weekend I have done a re-watch of DA and today I made it through the end of s3 and felt compelled to write this for some strange reason. I do like the angst, but even I have to admit that this is beyond mere angst, so read at your own discretion and heed the warnings, please.

“Anna, Go see what’s going on. I thought Mama would be in here to see her grandson straight away,” Mary said, somewhat perplexed as she heard her mother’s voice just outside the hospital room door. Clarkson must have stopped her for some reason, and Mary knew she and the others would be in to see her and the baby soon enough, but it was odd and as seconds had turned into minutes, Mary found herself curious and perhaps somewhat concerned.

She took the baby from Anna and cradled it in her arms, thinking that the little boy she held was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. His eyes were shut and had yet to open enough for her to see their colour, but Mary imagined that they’d be as strikingly blue as Matthew’s. Little tufts of dark hair, however, hinted at his mother’s hair colour. He was the perfect combination of Matthew and Mary Crawley, and his mother could not have been more proud.

For the past eight months she had wondered what it would be like to hold her child and look into his or her eyes and know that she and Matthew had created someone so pure and beautiful. Matthew had said seeing his child would be the single most profound moment of his life. While Mary hadn’t been quite so poetic in her thoughts—she had said she would perhaps understand granny and her mother at long last—she had fallen more in love with her husband for his paternal feelings.

Matthew was forever sharing with her how fortunate he was to have found her, but Mary knew that she was the lucky one, and when their little family had finally been brought together not even an hour earlier, Mary’s heart had been full. The baby that had been growing within her body for the past eight months, with tiny fingers so small that they looked like ones from one of Mary’s dolls from when she was a child, had fit so perfectly in her arms and even more perfectly in Matthew’s.

Mary couldn’t wait to see their little boy grow up with Matthew as his role model. While being who they were meant they would not be with their son much each day, she knew without doubt that watching her husband and son’s relationship as the years passed would be what brought her the most joy throughout the rest of her days.

Mary closed her eyes as she remembered the look in Matthew’s eyes as he had held his son for the first time. Those beautiful blue eyes had been filled with such love, and that moment when he had kissed her, their son in her arms, well, that had been the most perfect of moments, one that Mary would carry with her forever.

And what made that moment all the more special had been Mary’s thought that there would be many more perfect moments to follow.

The whole of her life was before her and Mary couldn’t imagine a more perfect beginning to a future with her husband and son.

When the door opened and Mary saw her father standing in the doorway, his arms around her mother, both of their faces drained of colour, she knew.

No one needed to tell her.

She swallowed and looked down at her sleeping son. “Anna?” she said as calmly as was possible as she watched Anna enter the room. Mary handed the baby over before returning her attention to her parents. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” She said it with absolutely no emotion, but when she looked at Anna, and at her sleeping son who had no idea what joy he had brought his mother and father in the brief time they had been a family of three, and when she thought about all those perfect moments that would never be, it broke through her shattered heart and she wept and allowed her parents to sit on either side of her as they hugged her. Anna must have handed the baby to her mother because the door opened and closed and then Mary was looking at her sleeping son, lamenting the fact that her little boy would never know his father.

She had waited so long for Matthew and had nearly lost him more than once, but in the end she had got him and they had been as happy as two people had the right to be. She had thought her happy ending was assured, but she had been wrong.

While she silently cried and as the tears ran down her face as she ran her fingers down her son’s face, she wondered how it was possible to go from the heights of happiness to the depths of despair in such a short period of time. She had watched Tom go through it after Sybil, and that had been so very hard to watch—she remembered thinking she wouldn’t be able to go on if anything happened to Matthew, but that had been a thought. 

A thought.

Just a thought.

“Oh, Mama,” she said as her cries could no longer be kept silent. “Not Matthew. Not Matthew,” she repeated, wishing that whatever had taken Matthew would claim her as well. Where minutes earlier she had felt such love for her infant son, now she only felt sadness. She knew that one day soon her love for the child she and Matthew had created would return—the baby was, after all, all she had left of Matthew—but for the moment she just couldn’t feel anything but grief, thus she turned her head away, not able to look upon that darling little face, knowing that those eyes that had still yet to open would never ever see his father.

When her father stood some seconds later and began walking to the door, Mary wanted so badly to run to him and have him hug her like he had when she’d been a little girl. He had always made her feel safe and that is what she needed him to do for her now. She lifted her head from her mother’s chest and hoped her father would turn and look at her because she couldn’t have said a word if she wanted to.

“Oh, Mary, my dear Mary,” he said, thick emotion in his voice as he did turn and look lovingly into his daughter’s eyes, “we shall get through this. I don’t know how, but we shall,” and then he turned and left the room.

Mary cleared her throat. The time for tears wasn’t over—it wouldn’t ever be over—but she had questions and wanted answers before the whole of Downton descended upon her and the baby.

She looked up at her mother who was smiling at her through her tears, and let out a rather deep breath. “It was the car, wasn’t it?" And when her mother gave a sad sigh and nodded, Mary closed her eyes and shook her head. “I told Matthew I’d rather he not get it. He said that if I really didn’t want him to get it he wouldn’t, so of course I let him. I did always find it difficult to say no to him, Mama.”


End file.
